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This article examines the mechanisms involved in the formation of regional Italian from the perspective of contact linguistics. Varieties of regional Italian containing elements of both local dialects and Standard Italian (SI) are spoken throughout Italy; this paper focuses primarily on Salento, a southern region characterized by a strong bilingual environment. The aim is to investigate the interaction between a dialect and a standard language, as well as the concrete linguistic mechanisms involved. The historical background of the acquisition of SI and its diffusion throughout the national territory are considered crucial moments in language transmission. Sociolinguistic characteristics of speakers are also analyzed, as are three types of constructions: change of verb transitivity, use of polyvalent complementizer, and gerunds. The analysis confirms that the spoken variety of Italian, regional Italian, is a result of contact-induced change of SI influenced by the local dialect, Salentino.

In the present study we examine the notion ‘subject’ in finite clauses in Greek, a null-subject language, and we investigate the connection between the rich morphological marking of subject-agreement on the verb and the definition of this notion. We propose that ‘subject’ in Greek should be analysed as a discontinuous element which consists of a null nominal element in the SpecTP position satisfying the Extended Projection Principle (EPP), associated with a pro at the relevant theta-position inside the VP. We argue that this analysis has not only the theoretical advantage of maintaining the universally strong value of EPP, but also, perhaps more importantly, the descriptive advantage of providing a satisfactory explanation for a number of apparent idiosyncrasies of Greek constructions.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a unified account of the particles þa, na and as in Greek, and second, to refine the articulated CP structure of Rizzi (1997). To this end, it is argued that þa, na, and as occupy the lower C head, which is specified for modality. The particles na and as further raise to a higher C head (partly similar to Rizzi’s Force), thus differing from þa. The distribution of topic and focus in relation to the particles and the typical complementisers oti and an is used as evidence for the postulation of an additional C head characterised as a subordinator/connector, typically occupied by the complementiser pu and optionally by oti and an. The resulting structure differs from Rizzi’s (1997) in that it provides a tripartite C structure and places FocusP/TopicP between the two higher C heads. In the light of this analysis we also consider the position of negation, as well as the position of the verb in imperatives and gerunds.

This paper discusses the properties of Greek V-ondas forms, referred to as gerunds in Holton et al. (1997). It is argued that the clauses in which they occur are adjuncts with a reduced functional structure. Their temporal interpretation will be shown to illustrate the underspecified status of the features of the V-ondas complex as well as the truncated structure of the clause in which it occurs. The position and interpretation of subjects of gerunds will be argued to follow from (a) the inflectional underspecification of gerunds and (b) the pragmatic nature of control.

This chapter examines certain grammatical changes in progress in the isolated Gaelic-English bilinguals speech community. The younger Embo bilinguals grew up in a community which lacked a monolingual Gaelic norm. There no awareness at all in the community of developments currently underway in the grammar of the so-called 'initial mutations'. Initial mutations are phonological alternations in certain word- or root-initial consonants in a wide variety of syntactic environments. In East Sutherland Gaelic (ESG) the mutational system may be said to be the same for all age groups. Although the term 'passive' suggests a verbal structure to the English speaker, the passive in ESG is essentially a nominal construction centered on a possessive pronoun modifying a gerund. It is within the co-ordinate case systems of the article and the masculine noun that we find mutational variability which correlates once again with the age of the speaker.Keywords: East Sutherland Gaelic; Gaelic-English bilinguals; grammatical change; initial mutations; masculine noun; monolingual Gaelic norm; mutational variability; possessive pronoun

This chapter pursues the issues of simplification and confluence in language death by examining closely the fate of morphological complexity in a terminal Scottish Gaelic dialect. The structures chosen for investigation represent the extreme in morphological complexity for this dialect and for Scottish Gaelic in general. The noun plural and the gerund in Scottish Gaelic are particularly high-frequency structures, and they are formed in a rich variety of ways. This richness is essentially gratuitous. Some of the devices for the formation of plurals and gerunds are phonotactically or morpho phonemically capable of operation with only certain groups of nouns or verbs; but others are potentially capable of extension to all nouns or verbs. East Sutherland Gaelic (ESG) is spoken by fewer than 150 people, all of them bilingual in English, on the east coast of the county of Sutherland in the extreme north of mainland Scotland.Keywords: East Sutherland Gaelic (ESG); English; gerunds; language death; morphological complexity; noun plural; Scottish Gaelic dialect

Chiyo Nishida and Cinzia Russi: Introduction Asier Alcazar and Mario Saltarelli: Why imperative sentences cannot be embedded Cecile Barbet and Louis de Saussure: Sporadic aspect as a pragmatic enrichment of dynamic root modality Pier Marco Bertinetto: Tense-aspect acquisition meets typology Patrick Caudal and Marie-Eve Ritz: Discourse structure and the perfective evolution of the Australian Present Perfect: Some new hypotheses Pilar Chamorro: Future time reference and irrealis modality in Chamorro: A study of preverbal para Justin Kelly: The syntax and semantics of infinitival yet constructions Yusuke Kubota, Jungmee Lee, Anastasia Smirnova and Judith Tonhauser: Cross-linguistic variation in temporal adjunct clauses Brenda Laca: On modal tenses and tensed modals I-wen Lai: The realis and irrealis distinction in the Iquito language Hiroki Nomoto and Nala Huiying Lee: Realis, factuality and derived-level statives: Perspectives from the analysis of Singlish got Katia Paykin and Fayssal Tayalati: Behavior adjectives: Dynamic, agentive and unergative Alain Rihs: A defence of the overlap criterion for distinguishing between the French gerund and present participle Cinzia Russi: Locating Italian volere 'to want' and volerci 'to be needed, to be required' in the Verb-to-TAM chain Karen Zagona: Ser and estar: Phrase structure and aspect

This chapter focuses on the occurrence of what appears to be the most prominent features concerning the syntactic changes. These are: (1) Subordinate clause with ut, quia or quod instead of accusative + infinitive (AcI) or nominative + infinitive (NcI); (2) Substitution of oratio oblique with direct speech; (3) Finite use of the present participle; (4) Use of the ablative of the gerund instead of present participle; (5) Use of coepisse/incipere + infinitive instead of conjugated verb in past tense, historical present, absolute ablative, participle or gerund; (6) Periphrastic use of debere + infinitive expressing future; (7) Use of facere + infinitive; (8) Use of unus as indefinite article; and (9) Use of preposition instead of case.Keywords: Bamberg (B); language

R. D. Borsley, "Introduction" R. Hudson, "Grammar without Functional Categories" R. Cann, "Functional versus Lexical: A Cognitive Dichotomy" D. Adger, "Feature Checking under Adjacency and VSO Clause Structure" R. D. Borsley and J. Kornfilt, "Mixed Extended Projections" R. Malouf, "Verbal Gerunds as Mixed Categories in HPSG" A. Warner, "English Auxiliaries without Lexical Rules" F. Newmeyer, "The Discrete Nature of Syntactic Categories: Against Prototype-Based Account" R. Kempson, W. Meyer-Viol, and D. Gabbay, "Syntactic Computation as Labeled Deduction: WH-a Case Study" M.-L. Rivero, "Finiteness and Second Position in Long Verb Movement Languages: Breton and Slavic" A. Abeille and D. Godard, "French Word Order and Lexical Weight"

Grammatical categories are central to generative theories of grammar. In many ways, the study of syntax really is just the study of grammatical categories. Problems that have cropped up with the originally proposed parts of speech have been solved by decomposing them into bundles of binary features ±N and ±V. Despite this success, there remains a class of constructions, known as trans-categorial or simply mixed category constructions, which do not fit well with any refinement of the four basic categories. The chapter first discusses the properties of verbal gerunds, with particular attention paid to their status as mixed categories. Next, it reviews some of the previous proposals offered to account for verbal gerunds. Finally, the chapter presents an analysis of mixed categories as non-canonical combinations of properties from independent grammatical dimensions. The nominal nature of verbal gerunds is shown most clearly by the external distribution of verbal gerund phrases (VGerPs). Keywords: phrase structure grammar; verbal gerund phrases (VGerPs); verbal gerunds